MARCH 22ND - Poll closed. Congratulation to djfsolo for winning this On Assignment!

MARCH 1ST - Submissions closed, vote for your favourite!

Hi everyone! Welcome to February's Assignment!

The theme for this month is "high key", as suggested by daisy who won the December 2010 competition. Be sure to read the whole post for the rules.

In daisy's own words:

"The task for February is HIGH KEY. Any subject is acceptable so long as it conforms to the style and technique. You can look up definitions online but my ‘take’ on High Key photography is that a full range of tones from the lightest to full black must appear somewhere in the picture with the lighter end of the tonal spectrum dominating; areas of black should be minimal but certainly present. Perfect lighting and precise exposure will be necessary to retain texture throughout the tonal range and to achieve subtlety of contrast between the full range of shades. Imagine a blonde girl in a white brocade wedding dress holding a bouquet of white flowers in a white room,.. but a misty landscape could work too, or a suitable still-life subject … anything you choose. This need not necessarily become a monochrome exercise, colour images should be submitted so long as they remain within the spirit of the idea.

RULES: Image size 1024 pixels maximum (or smaller but with a link to a larger off-site image if you so choose), shot during February. Lighting: I would like to think that an amateur using bedsheet reflectors and tissue paper diffusers could match the efforts of a semi-professional with all the studio bounce-flash, diffuser screens, lighting stands and backgrounds that that environment provides, and that credit might be given accordingly come voting time. Please describe your lighting set-up in your technical notes. Minimal post processing please and certainly nothing intrusive… try to get the image as perfect as possible actually in the camera. Append descriptive notes on the subject and composition if you wish and please describe equipment used and techniques employed."

The rules!

1: You can only submit one image and it MUST be taken during February 2011. Photos taken earlier will be disqualified!

2: All images submitted must be no more than 1024 pixels on their longest side, although you can include a link to a full resolution version if you like. Flickr users must link back to the original version to comply with its latest rules.

As always, please exercise good judgement on what is suitable for the forum. Keep it clean and family-friendly or it'll be removed. See the Forum Rules for guides.

Please include a sentence or two with your photo describing what you were trying to achieve and if there were any particular challenges in doing so like, for example, any special exposure or lighting setup.

We're all enthusiasts here, so it's also great to see what equipment you used and the settings too. So please also include the following:

In the midst of the standard rainy Washington winter, there was an afternoon of sunshine and a glorious sunset off one of the few desolate beaches near Seattle. It was my first time shooting slide (color reversal) film, and I was stunned to discover I shot this!

I've never done High Key before so this is a first. These flowers fell from the tree near my cottage this morning and solved my problem. I prayed for a suitably black insect to crawl across them but none obliged, so no pure blacks in this shot!

Camera Model: Canon 7D
Lens and focal length: Zeiss 50mm f/2 makro
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/200s
Sensitivity: ISO100
Post processing: Slight tweaks to levels, curves, WB adjust.
Lighting: two continuous diffuse lights, placed about 45 degrees either side in front of her. Normal room lighting also, but probably too weak to be significant.
Setup problems: White wall is some 6 inches behind her so it was difficult to adjust the position preventing shadows and to defocus it out to prevent a coarse texture. The continuous lights seem to have a high frequency flicker, that shows up as variations in brightness and colour when using a fast shutter. If I was doing this more seriously, I'd get a nice ND filter to increase the shutter time to at least one mains cycle (1/50) or longer multiple. The light stand legs and camera tripod also decided they wanted to be in the same space as each other.
Other problems: her hair is impossible to manage!

Shot against white sheet pushpined to the wall, 2 small lights facing background, slave flash on tripod facing subject's back, pull up flash on camera active. Not perfect, but best I could do without a model. Tinkered with brightness and contrast, used softening filter.

couldn`t think of a subject for this, until I looked at or should I say wife`s dog. Its a Chinese crested powder puff. 100 macro at 5.6 and 1/125 iso 100 oops forgot to mention exposure +1
cropped in photoshop.